


The Nameless Slip Away

by alicekittridge



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Other, POV Third Person, Past Tense, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:57:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17130284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: When she first came to him, Villanelle resembled a ghost.ORA glimpse of how Villanelle became, well, Villanelle, from Konstantin's perspective.





	The Nameless Slip Away

**Author's Note:**

> Another little character study that I've had in the works since September that I finally decided to post. Konstantin's perspective is quite a challenging one to write from, mostly because I never really write from male perspectives. I do hope you enjoy reading this. Your readership and feedback are, as always, appreciated xx 
> 
> Rated as M in preparation for the later chapters, where the sexual content will come in.

** 2018 **

When she first came to him, dark-haired, quietly stubborn, fresh out of prison and an artfully faked death, Villanelle resembled a ghost. There was a heartbeat underneath that ribcage and something behind those hazel eyes but it was a lost look, a hateful look. According the file accumulated by higher-ups, Oksana had been grounded by an obsessive love towards Anna Leonova and murdered her husband. A woman who, just a single week after the faked death, Konstantin had to pay a visit to and tell her the news. He hasn’t forgotten the look on that woman’s face, nor the sound of weeping that accompanied him down the hallway until he was at the top of the stairwell. But Oksana’s grounding had become unstable and eventually invisible, and so his primary task was to help her find ground, get her life back in order, readjust to society.

           

** 2014 **

“You should buy yourself some clothes,” he said. They were at a standard-issue apartment and she was standing in the kitchen, staring down the sink. “Something you’ve always wanted to wear,” he added, in hopes it would get her to perk up. She was wearing cheap supermarket jeans paired with a blanket-like long-sleeved T-shirt and boots, a half-poor girl’s clothing. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and held out a red credit card to her. “The limit is twenty-thousand. Try not to go over.”

            Wordlessly, she took it and put it in her back pocket.

            “Think of it as starting a new life, Oksana.”

            “She’s dead,” she said, with such soft anger it made Konstantin’s heart skip a beat, “and I am nameless.” She slipped away, her boots echoing off the walls, the door slamming shut behind her.

            She was gone for four hours. During that time, Konstantin wondered whether his bosses had made the right choice in choosing that girl. She was young, barely twenty-two, still a kid by most adults’ standards, still discovering who she was, but obviously there was potential about her, some violent thing hidden inside her cool exterior. She’d murdered someone, after all, and though it was sloppily done—castration always was—it was successful.

            “Training will take that sloppiness right out of her,” said one boss, Dimitri, a few days before they were to get her out of prison. “She’ll be neat as a pin when we’re done with her. But your priority is to help her readjust.”

            When she came back she was laden with many shopping bags of various sizes, and while she unpacked them in the spare bedroom, he nearly gaped. She’d chosen expensive brands, French designers, and the clothes were of the darker spectrum. Then there were the perfumes, which she placed carefully in the medicine cabinet in her cubby of a bathroom.

            “Usually,” Konstantin said, “how these things go is you choose your own name. Gives you more freedom to try it on, discard it if you don’t like it.”

            “That may take a while,” she said, opening one last vial of perfume and raising the dropper to her nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to choose one for me? You seem perfectly content to choose everything else. This shit apartment, for example.”

            “It’s what I could afford,” said Konstantin.

            She left the bathroom and began to hang up her new clothes in the closet. There were blouses and slacks and suit jackets and coats and shoes and more casual but still pricey clothes. Not a single bright color among them.

            “You’ll have to expand your color palate,” he said.

            “I thought people liked melancholy colors.” She held up a black peacoat. “Don’t I look good?”

            “Sensational.”

            She stroked the wool, plucked at loose fibers. Even her fingers had potential. Then, “What did you tell Anna?”

            He froze, but only for a moment. “Where did you hear that?”

            “A swallow.”

            He sighed. “I told her you had died. She asked how, I explained. That was all.”

            He couldn’t read the look on her face but something flickered, brief and bright, in her eyes, and then it was gone.

           

—

“Isn’t it nice to have real food again?”

            They were with an employer-issued psychologist, Virginie LeGrand, a native of France but fluent in Russian and employed specifically for this reason. She regarded Oksana with a professional but curious gaze, and she seemed almost eager to get to know the girl. Konstantin made himself the background, not wanting to interfere unless he had to. Which would, by the looks of it, be soon, because Oksana was holding her steak knife a little too tightly, cutting a little too fast.

            “How are you adjusting, Oksana?” Virginie asked, and was met, once again, with silence.

            “She doesn’t go by that name anymore,” Konstantin said. “She has yet to choose a new one.”

            “I see,” said Virginie. She made a note in her small notepad. “And how is that going?”

            “Is this really necessary?” Oksana said at last. “Prison was shit but I’m fine.”

            “We want to be sure you’re stable.”

            “If I weren’t,” said Oksana, “you’d be facedown in your borsht.”

            Virginie passed him a glance but otherwise said nothing.

            “She seems… lost,” Virginie said later, when they were standing outside the apartment complex. Oksana had already gone in, her mood obviously soured by the lunch meeting. “I read her file and the information I was given but it seems she really did love that Anna woman. If people like her can experience love.”

            Konstantin almost said yes, they can, but in a way that ‘normal people’ wouldn’t quite understand. He would know, of course; he had strings of lovers before he met his lovely wife, before they had a loud, bone-headed daughter named Irina who was as fiery as her hair. He only hummed in acknowledgement to Virginie’s words.

            “I’d like to stay on this case, if that’s all right with you,” Virginie continued.

            “They didn’t order you to this case?” he asked, surprised.

            “They did, but they also said I needed her new handler’s permission.”

            “You have my permission.”

            “They’ll be weekly sessions, I think, but we can sort that out later.”

            “Certainly, Virginie.” He shook her hand. It was thin but strong, and surprisingly warm. “Thank you for your time.”

 

—

In the following weeks, there were meetings with Virginie every Thursday afternoon. She had another house on a quiet street that she turned into an office, and so, looking almost like a father dropping off his daughter, Konstantin drove Oksana there and waited the hour and fifteen minutes and drove her back. They only talked about the sessions in spare words, but it was clear Oksana didn’t like them. She tended to deflect them with questions of her own, often about his own personal life, or something witty or rude, but then, minutes or hours or even days later, she would answer a question. Her answers were always short but literal, catching him off guard for a few moments. The more he asked, the more she closed up, tight as a clam; soon there would be no pick sharp enough to pry her open.

            There was a meeting, before her training was to begin, and Konstantin was invited to observe. He knew very little about psychology but had a sense for people and reading them; something that, he supposed, came with the territory. Psychology had always both fascinated and terrified him. A complete stranger could pick up on your quirks and, within twenty minutes, know parts of you better than you knew them yourself. Some people were easier than others, and the moment he sat down with Oksana on the couch he knew she was on the other end of the spectrum.

            Virginie walked in carrying emerald green bottles of mineral water for them both and greeted them with a friendly but professional “Hello.” She wore all black. She sat in her chair, laptop open, notepad with its pen nearby. “Thank you for joining us, Konstantin.”

            He inclined his head. His space to speak would come later.

            “Now,” Virginie turned to Oksana, whose posture was casual but her jaw was set, “I’ve been told you will start training within the next week.” She typed something on her laptop. “I want you to study these,” she turned the laptop around and on its screen was a slideshow of pictures, “and tell me what you see.”

            The first one was of a hanged woman, in full color, her eyes surprisingly wide open. Oksana leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She said, “A hanged woman.”

            “What else?”

            “Nice eyes.”

            The image disappeared and was replaced by an older man who’d been disemboweled. “And this one?” said Virginie.

            “A sloppy kill.”

            “What if I told you that was done by a professional?”

            Oksana scoffed but said nothing.

            That image slid into a photograph of Anna Leonova, obviously scanned from one of her home pictures. Virginie asked, “What about this one?”

            Oksana’s jaw worked. She was biting the inside of her cheek.

            “Do you still feel something for her?”

            “No,” Oksana said. Her voice was cold. “She wanted me to rot.”

            Virginie made notes. “You resent her, then?”

            “Wouldn’t you, if someone you loved called you sick? Wanted you to stay in a shithole forever?”

            “I suppose so,” said Virginie after a moment.

            There were more pictures, and then a more official assessment, but Oksana was more closed off than ever. When it was obvious there was nothing else to be done, Virginie dismissed her but asked Konstantin to remain behind.

            “She’s never been so honest. I’d call that progress.”

            “I would be careful,” Konstantin said. “You saw how cold she was.”

            “Do you think she’s ready?”

            “There may not be a choice.” He took a sip of his mineral water. “You know what I’m thinking, Virginie?”

            “Tell me.”

            “That woman’s going to haunt her.”

            Virginie hummed and set her laptop aside. She said, “Sometimes ghosts do us good.”


End file.
